He catches me, laughs, picks me up and spins me around like something out of a romance movie. I have never felt so light, so weightless as I do in his arms.
“I did,” he says, the laugh dying in his throat as we go still, and he sets me back down on the ground. I barely feel it under my feet. The only thing I can see, the only thing I can think about is him.
His arms are still around me, and the sweet, spicy smell of his cologne tickles my senses. That thing is between us, hanging there, just waiting for one of us to pick it up and run with it.
I want to be the one to do it, but every time I think about making a move, my heart feels like gelatin.
“Come with me,” he says.
The words still everything inside me besides my throat, which bobs as I swallow. Our eyes are locked, and I see the seriousness there behind his gaze. He really means it.
“Come with you?” I ask, in case I’m losing my mind, and he said something completely different. “To Michigan?”
“Yes.” He’s breathless, alive with the kind of energy I saw in him during his hockey game. “You’re not sure what you want to do yet—” something I confided in him during one of our many text conversations, “—so come with me to Michigan. I’ll be in my own apartment, well, student housing, paid for by the school. You could take a class or two. You wouldn’t have to commit to anything. And I have enough money saved up from construction work to pay for both of us.”
I want to tell him that I have enough, too — enough really that I would never have to work if I didn’t want to, but the knowledge that he’s worked so hard to save that money and would spend it on me so easily makes my words clog up in my throat.
“I…”
“You’re so smart, Lara. Maybe college isn’t right for you right now, but I know you’re way too much for Wildfern Ridge. You deserve something bigger than this place.”
Everything is happening so fast, and more than anything, I don’t want to let him down. Everyone in my life — my parents, Zachery, Jake — all have ideas about what I should do with my life.
And I don’t.
I know that I love Wildfern Ridge, but maybe that’s fear talking, holding me back. If my parents think I should apply to college, Zachery thinks I should go backpacking in Europe with him for a gap year, and Jake thinks we should go to Michigan, maybe they’re right, and Wildfern Ridge really is too small for me.
“Okay,” I hear myself saying, and the smile that breaks over his face is enough to make anything, any sacrifice, worth it. His hands are on my waist, and he pulls me toward him, a quick tug and a silent sway that feels like it’s leading to a kiss. But doesn’t.
“Okay,” he repeats, hands tightening on me, that smile unwavering. “Okay. We’re going together.”
I feel it — that thing — trembling between us, delicate enough that a single breath might break it.
So, I do more than breathe. I think about the apartment above the café, the one my parents sometimes loan to their visiting friends, and I think about how it’s empty for the night.
Then I say, “Jake, would you like to come upstairs with me?”
CHAPTER 6
JAKE
“Well, you were right,” Lara says from her spot on the other end of the boat. “It’s way better in the summer.”
She’s a picture of beauty, wearing a striped navy swimsuit and a large sun hat, a little smear of white over her cheeks. When she jumped into my truck, it was with a tote bag of sunscreen and a warning from her mother to reapply regularly.
“According to her,” Lara had said, “freckles mean skin cancer.”
Now, we’re on a little rowboat I rented from the shack near the dock, and she’s relaxing as I row us around. The waterfall on the other end of the lake is louder now than it was in the winter, and I swear I can feel the rumble of it under the water.
“Everything is better in the summer,” I say, eyes traveling up her long legs, tracing the shape of her hip, climbing up to her shoulders.
I know I’m obsessed with her. Maybe it’s a problem, how much I like her. If anyone knew about us, if I could talk to someoneelse about this feeling, maybe they would tell me that you’re not supposed to like every single thing about your girlfriend.
That you’re not supposed to obsess over her elbows and tug on the ends of her hair. That you’re not supposed to run to the next town in the middle of the night just because she wants a Snickers. That guys shouldn’t join shared Pinterest boards and add apartment decorations to a curation she’s making for our space in Michigan.
But I don’t care.
If any of my buddies did know, and they told me I was whipped, I’d tell them any man would be.
